Traditionally this type of color pattern is knitted in dark indigo blue cotton against an unbleached white background. This bag takes approximately 80-100 yards of unbleached white and somewhat less of the dark blue, which isn’t used in every round.

I named the pattern because there are a number of surviving embroideries worked in cross stitch (from the 11th to 14th centuries) that show samples of bands very similar to these. The bands were designed to be embroidered across the width of a turban-scarf near one end. The idea is that you would wind the long narrow scarf several times around your head as a turban, then leave the embroidered end dangling decoratively down your back.

As with all my patterns, a lot of interesting historical information is part of the pattern!

The stitch numbers can of course be adjusted to make the size of bag you want. The color patterns may or may not meet seamlessly at the start and end of rounds, but there is abundant evidence from surviving scraps that historical knitters didn’t care whether the repeat was exactly right or not ;)